Mendelssohn's Reformation Symphony

Mendelssohn’s first published symphony for full orchestra, Op. 11 in C Minor, appeared in 1834, though he dated the autograph ten years before, in 1824, when he gave it the title Sinfonia XIII. In 1821, the ambitious twelve-year-old composer had begun a series of string symphonies, of which twelve had been completed and privately performed at the family Berlin residence by 1824., These works had largely adhered to eighteenth-century models and drawn on J.S. Bach, C.P.E. Bach, and Mozart. Like its predecessors, the new symphony was performed privately in Berlin. It was in Mendelssohn’s portfolio of compositions that the twenty-year-old brought in 1829 to London, where he conducted it at a Philharmonic concert, with a newly made orchestration of the scherzo form the Octet substituting for the minuet. A piano duet arrangement appeared in 1830 and four years later the now internationally celebrated composer finally published the orchestral parts.

The first symphony is an energetic work in which Mendelssohn decisively broke away from the stylishly conservative string symphonies and their bristling academic counterpoint. The dynamic opening theme, with its dramatic interruptions and accentuated dissonances, suggests the storm music from Carl Maria von Weber’s “romantic opera” Der Freischütz, premiered in Berlin in 1821, but also the explosive influence of Beethoven, increasingly evident in Mendelssohn’s music of the mid-1820s. The serene opening theme of the Andante displays balanced phrases and a classical poise reminiscent of Mozart and Haydn. Of special note is the third-movement Menuetto, curiously barred in 6/4 instead of 3/4. Mendelssohn borrowed the theme from his Viola Sonata of 1824, but extensively revised the movement and prepared a new central trio, which again betrays his enthusiasm for Beethoven, and in particular for his Fifth Symphony, also in C minor. The scherzo of Beethoven’s Fifth, with its celebrated transition to the finale, served as a model for Mendelssohn’s transition, after the trio, to the return of the minuet, as the softly dampened string textures and pianissimo timpani strokes reveal. And the finale of Op. 11, an energetic sonata-form movement with a concluding stretto in C major, again traces its youthful inspiration to the finale of Beethoven’s iconic symphony.

R. LARRY TODD © 2012

In 1829, Mendelssohn began work on what he described as a Kirchensinfonie (“Church Symphony”). Its stimulus was the tercentenary of the Augsburg Confession, celebrated throughout Protestant Germany on June 25, 1830. (During the height of the Reformation in 1530, the Diet of Augsburg had promulgated twenty-eight decrees, of which twenty-one summarized the tenets of the new Lutheran faith, and seven identified abuses of the Catholic Church.) By May 1830, Mendelssohn had completed his composition, but for reasons that remain unclear, it was not performed in June. Two years later, he attended a rehearsal of the symphony at the Paris Conservatoire, but postponed the premiere until November of that year in Berlin. Having second thoughts, he then rejected the piece as a “childish bit of juvenilia” and left instructions for the manuscript to be destroyed. But the score survived, and was eventually released posthumously in 1868 as Mendelssohn’s Op. 107, his fifth and final symphony to appear in print.

The Reformation Symphony was Mendelssohn’s first symphonic foray into programmatic music. Like Symphony No. 1, the Reformation betrays the influence of Beethoven, and responds to the critical views of Mendelssohn’s friend the music theorist A.B. Marx, who argued that Beethoven had brought the symphonic genre to the realm of program music, enabling music to represent ideas and trace narratives in pure sounds. Mendelssohn’s symphony treats the conflict between the Catholic and Lutheran faiths and ultimately impresses as a celebration of the Reformation. Thus, the slow introduction to the first movement simulates Catholic sacred polyphony through imitative counterpoint, with slowly rising entries that hearken back to the stile antico of Palestrina, the sixteenth-century composer whose Masses and motets had emblematized the Counter-Reformation. Felix introduces in this opening section a second telltale reference, the so-called “Dresden Amen,” a response used in Catholic regions of Germany and associated with the Holy Spirit. (This simple, scale-like ascent in the high strings would later figure prominently in Wagner’s Parsifal.) After the slow introduction, the first movement proper begins with a fiery Allegro in D minor with militant fanfares to suggest the rupture of the two faiths.

The extra-musical significance of the second movement, a light Scherzo in B-flat major, is not clear, though one recent theory has suggested that it depicts a procession for Corpus Christi, a Latin rite celebrated not only by the Catholic Church but also by some Lutheran congregations. The introverted third movement, an Andante in G minor, may owe its inspiration in part to a cantata Mendelssohn composed in 1828 to commemorate another tercentenary, that of the German artist Albrecht Dürer. The culminating finale is a symphonic fantasy on the Lutheran chorale Ein’ feste Burg ist unser Gott (“A Mighty Fortress is Our God”). Introduced by a solo flute, the familiar melody is buttressed by winds and brass, symbolizing collective, congregational worship. A transition leads to an Allegro that revisits the idea of spiritual division through a dissonant fugato. Ultimately the symphony concludes with triumphant chorale strains in D major for the entire orchestra. 

R. LARRY TODD © 2012